Is that handwriting on my wall a forgery!

What was your diagnosis? " I asked the first neurologist. "I have to tell my wife exactly or she will be irritated."

"I said it is early stage parkinson's. How's your handwriting?"

"My cursive is better than my printing."

He raised an eyebrow, as if he was staring me down. "Show me." he said. "Write (here I forget what he told me to write, something to do with the weather, I think")

I finished and passed it over to him. "Hmm, that's pretty good." And for a moment he seemed to lose his train of thought. But. "No, you have Parkinson's Disease. I am confident in my diagnosis as I said before."

He was right, I did have PD. I went home and read about the handwriting of PWP. It got increasingly difficult to form the words which seemed to get smaller as the writing continued. My writing was perfectly straight, legible and neat. That must have given him pause.

He needn't have worried. My handwriting went to hell, to the point where my wife had to write out cheques for me to sign. My scrawl was illegible, hers was beautiful "femme writing"

To the rescue came my personal knight in shinning armor. Yes, the all-powerful L-Dopa.

Tim Tebow(that American quarter back with a religious zeal, who, in his zelousness, thought that Jesus Christ had any interest in a football game), said this following a game:

"I guess, first and foremost, I'd like to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ"

I would substitute "Levadopa" for "Jesus" and be closer to an honest religious experience. When the LD kicks in, my world lights up and my handwriting returns to the glory of Pre-PD. I can actually write cheques and, believe it or not, address envelopes.

Now all this might be nothing to you, but to me it is one small victory in a losing battle with an enemy I can't see but who is taking shots at me constantly with my only warrior being the mighty L-Dopa, I know the drug will gradually lose its effectiveness in the future and I will have surernder unless the researchers can find a cure. But apparently, mine is not the only problem in the world.

"We have common enemies today. It's called childhood poverty. It's called cancer. It's called AIDS. It's called Parkinson's. It's called muscular Dystrophy."(Jerrry Doyle talk show host)

I remain confident they will all be curable in the future but do me a favour, make the shaking palsy a priority. Kind of selfish, I know, but hey, what are you going to do? I keep on keeping it positive. The writing is on the wall. PD is doomed and will be the first to go.